From Publishers Weekly
Red Greet, the 85-year-old mason and part-time thief of McIlvoy's deeply satisfying novel, tells you right at the outset, "I've always liked a Bible kind of story that adds on and keeps on adding." Following that principle, Red saturates his main story, about his love for the two women in his life?Cecilia, his wife, who died 20 years before the book opens, and her friend, Recita?with anecdotes of the local folkloric Catholicism that takes saints and miracles for facts. Red is haunted by the fact that Cecilia's own affections were divided between him and his best friend, Francisco Velasco, a priest and, in Red's view, a saint. McIlvoy (Little Peg; The Fifth Station) has beautifully rendered the soft, Spanish-inflected rhythms of English as it is spoken on the border, and Red is the classic picaresque rascal, even though his age endows him with the quasi-biblical stature appropriate to an account of a farming community where families are rooted for generations in each other's histories. The traditions that give symbolic shape to the great passages in life?birth, marriage, death?still hold weight here. When Francisco gives Cecilia the last rites, Red, who is looking on, realizes that they are consummating their lifelong passion for one another. But Red also recognizes that, in spite of the rivalry, he and Francisco are also bound by a tie of love, which is the sacrament holding Red's memorable, intelligently romantic story together. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review
"Strange and wonderful."


From Booklist
Red Greet is an endearing and energetic 87-year-old intractable petty criminal who tells his life story "like a coyote spitting up his own bones." Born and raised in Las Almas, New Mexico, in the ritual and tradition of Catholicism, Red is now newly married to a woman he has loved since before his first wife died some 25 years ago. In weaving the tales of his lifetime, this lover of life and people reveals his longing for salvation--the search for hyssop, a substance with the power to cleanse his soul. Central to the unfolding of Red's life story is his relationship of more than 70 years with Bishop Frank Velasco, his friend and confessor. With an underlying quality that is decidedly more spiritual than religious, Red's stories are a celebration of the poignant mix of wonder and wisdom known only to the elderly. There is a gentleness about this book that does not diminish its power, and serves to illuminate the often evanescent connection of faith and ritual to everyday life, love, struggle, and eventually salvation. Grace Fill

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Kevin McIlvoy's Hyssop is a remarkable novel filled with kindness, truth, and magic—a story that celebrates friendship and love while exploring the complexities of a simple faith that enriches materially impoverished lives. It is a gorgeous patchwork of memory lovingly sewn together by Red Greetaltruistic petty thief and guileless grifter-who has spent many days of his eighty-seven years behind bars in Las Almas, New Mexico. Twice married-the second time, while in jail, to his lifelong love Recita Holguin-Red has sampled pleasures available only to those capable of embracing life and its temptations without shame or fear. But his sins have been as memorable as his adventures-transgressions he shares freely with Bishop Francisco Velasco, Red's lifelong best friend and confessor, and his one-time rival for the affections of his first wife, Cecilia. In telling how he has loved and been loved, in confessing how he has sinned and inspired others to sin, Red Greet seeks hyssop, the substance that might wash his soul clean.

Author Biography:

Kevin McIlvoy is the author of the novels A Waltz, The Fifth Station, and Little Peg. He teaches at New Mexico State University and Warren Wilson College.

SYNOPSIS

"...is a wonderful gift of faith to a cynical age. Only a book this smart, tough-minded, funny, beautiful and, yes, humble could burrow so deeply into both the doubting and yearning heart."

-Richard Russo, author of Straight Man

"Often hilarious charming, unpretentious, deep, poetic, life-filled. A joy McIlvoy's novel is lyric and episodic. Life, tears, comedy, and love pour out of it at all points."

-Kirkus Review (*Starred Review*)

"Kevin McIlvoy is a fine writer, who clearly delights in the act of making prose and attending to the mysteries of character."

-Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A radiant, mysterious novel, brilliantly lit by hard-won faith, hyssop reminds us that we are all part of the lost tribe of the unchosen, and that despite that we can be saved by the language of love."

-Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever: Stories

"Endearing and energetic Red's stories are a celebration of the poignant mix of wonder and wisdom known only to the elderly. There is a gentleness about this book that does not diminish its power, and serves to illuminate the often evanescent connection of faith and ritual to everyday life, love, struggle, and eventual salvation."

-Booklist (*Starred Review*)

"Strange And Wonderful."

-The New York Times Book Review

Kevin McIlvoy is the author of the novels A Waltz, The Fifth Station, and Little Peg. He teaches at New Mexico State University and Warren Wilson College.

FROM THE CRITICS

Erik Burns - New York Times Book Review

Greet is a jackdaw of memory, collecting shiny, often unrelated bits of the past and presenting them with effusive joy.

Publishers Weekly

Red Greet, the 85-year-old mason and part-time thief of McIlvoy's deeply satisfying novel, tells you right at the outset, "I've always liked a Bible kind of story that adds on and keeps on adding." Following that principle, Red saturates his main story, about his love for the two women in his life--Cecilia, his wife, who died 20 years before the book opens, and her friend, Recita--with anecdotes of the local folkloric Catholicism that takes saints and miracles for facts. Red is haunted by the fact that Cecilia's own affections were divided between him and his best friend, Francisco Velasco, a priest and, in Red's view, a saint. McIlvoy (Little Peg; The Fifth Station) has beautifully rendered the soft, Spanish-inflected rhythms of English as it is spoken on the border, and Red is the classic picaresque rascal, even though his age endows him with the quasi-biblical stature appropriate to an account of a farming community where families are rooted for generations in each other's histories. The traditions that give symbolic shape to the great passages in life--birth, marriage, death--still hold weight here. When Francisco gives Cecilia the last rites, Red, who is looking on, realizes that they are consummating their lifelong passion for one another. But Red also recognizes that, in spite of the rivalry, he and Francisco are also bound by a tie of love, which is the sacrament holding Red's memorable, intelligently romantic story together. (Oct.)

Erik Burns

Greet is a jackdaw of memory, collecting shiny, often unrelated bits of the past and presenting them with effusive joy. -- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

McIlvoy (The Fifth Station; Little Peg) hits his stride with this life-affirming and unsentimental comedy of a widowed thief who finds his much-loved second bride when he's 86 and she a year younger. Red Greet, of Las Almas, New Mexico, sets the first scene of his story in 1996 (after he's been remarried a year) in a jail cell (where he's giving the jail-keeper a dance lesson): for Red, unabashedly full of life and loved by his many friends, has never been able not to steal. But this flaw isn't a simple matter, since Red has more Robin Hood or Quixote in him than simple thief. Go back to 1915, for example, when he first met Frank (Francisco) Velasco, the strange little boy whose father, a wife-abuser, left poverty behind. What happened if not that Red Greet's own father, a builder of stone walls, overcharged certain customers and gave the excess to his needy neighbors? Giving and receiving ripple throughout this often hilarious book, little Frank Velasco himself, Red Greet's best friend, becomes a Roman Catholic priest, then bishop, but ends out of the church's grace for having (among other most wondrous things), along with Red, "given" the house of a wealthy man over to needy field-workers during the 1994 Annual Hatch Chile Festival. McIlvoy's novel is lyric and episodic, seeming sometimes a string of stories, but life, tears, comedy, and love pour out of it at all points—for, thief or not, Red Greet is, as his second wife says, "a man with a river inside." Tall tales, old friends, reminiscences, the sisters (Arlene, Faye, Altadena), memories of school, a wedding in a playing field (the locks having been changed to keep Frank out of the Christ is King church),selling Christmas trees in a cemetery. Says Red, after all: "We were from poor families. What else could we spend but our words, our voices?" Charming, unpretentious, deep, poetic, life-filled. A joy.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A radiant, mysterious novel, brilliantly lit by hard-won faith, Hyssop reminds us that we are part of the lost tribe of the unchosen: and that despite that we can be saved by the language of love. — Andrea Barrett